Cllr Stewart Stacey, Cabinet Member for Transport and Roads, from Birmingham City Council meets staff at JMP who have benefitted from the workplace bike loan scheme.
A cycling revolution is taking place at the heart of England and our Project Officer Louise Aspinall is there helping to deliver it.
For people working in Birmingham city centre, cycling can be the quickest and easiest way to travel around the city, as well as being the healthiest and cheapest option. The Birmingham Cycle Revolution aims to make it easier for more people to cycle across the whole city.
The Bike Life survey conducted in 2015 showed that many more people in Birmingham would like to cycle – one in three respondents said they wanted to start riding a bike and over two thirds said there should be more investment in cycling.
How the workplace bike loan scheme works
The workplace bike loan scheme is one of the ways Birmingham Cycle Revolution is enabling people to change the way they travel around the city. Businesses can loan a bike for their staff to use, as well as loaning accessories such as a helmet, bike lock and lights. The scheme ensures people have everything they need to use the bike with no hassle.
“ We have been exploring many parts of Birmingham which are too far away to walk and that we would have never discovered if we didn’t have the pool bike.”
One of the workplaces that has enjoyed great success with the scheme is JMP - a consultancy firm based in the centre of Birmingham. They loaned a bike free of charge, for their staff to use for travelling to meetings around the city and at weekends. Many of the staff taking part in the scheme hadn’t cycled for a long time but say they now really enjoy it and the loan bike is in constant demand.
To go along with the loan bike, Birmingham Cycle Revolution has also provided JMP with other cycling activities such as Dr. Bike sessions, including free bike safety checks for staff who cycle to and from work.
Benefits for employees
Although the bike is primarily for work use it can also be used at weekends and it has enabled people to explore parts of Birmingham they would not have reached without a bike.
The loan bike scheme is a simple way of providing staff with a hassle free opportunity to try cycling. At JMP this has helped us to demonstrate the benefits of cycling to a large number of staff - enabling them to travel sustainably for more of the journeys they make every day.